As time passed, Akira also gradually felt the festive atmosphere.
It wasn't just because he could see the smoke rising from every household burning hemp stalks, but mainly because he suddenly had nothing to do these past few days.
Due to the combined issue of Shonen Jump, after finishing this chapter, he would have to wait half a month before drawing FSN again.
Meanwhile, the recording for "snow flower" was successfully completed, and his tasks had temporarily come to an end.
Next, the distribution and promotion of "Marigold" would be handled by Rin and Tanigawa Haruka; this was something he and Rin had agreed upon long ago.
It was precisely because of this that he had time to consider a short manga.
In fact, he already had a rough idea of what to draw, but if he were to draw that, it felt like it would be too much effort, making him slightly hesitant.
However, one particular aspect made him feel it would be very interesting, making it truly hard to let go.
The name of this work is "Weathering with You".
Simply put, "Weathering with You" tells the fantasy love story between the boy Hodaka and the girl Hina, who possesses the supernatural ability to control the weather.
As Makoto Shinkai's second work after "Your Name", unlike the critical and commercial success of "Your Name", "Weathering with You" faced quite a bit of controversy in external evaluations.
For instance, one of the biggest points of contention was that some people felt the male lead, Hodaka, sacrificing all of Tokyo just to save the female lead was too "selfish" and "antisocial".
But others argued that the plot mentioned that part of Tokyo was originally submerged land; the rain reclaiming the land occupied by humans was nature's choice.
From the first Sunshine Girl to the existence of the female lead Hina, it was essentially forcibly resisting nature by sacrificing human lives; this act itself was what was wrong.
And the male lead Hodaka's action was merely liberating the female lead Hina from a responsibility that she should never have had to bear in the first place.
At the same time, some also believed that as marginalized members of society, the male and female leads had never been treated with kindness by society, which is why they wouldn't sacrifice the person most important to them for the sake of society.
Besides that, there were also criticisms that "Weathering with You" lacked sufficient foreshadowing for the backgrounds and emotional development of the male and female leads, that some subplots were handled sloppily, and that the themes it wanted to express were too obscure.
Regarding these viewpoints, he also had his own opinions.
But regardless, that did not stop "Weathering with You" from being his favorite animated film among Makoto Shinkai's disaster trilogy.
However, the reason he so strongly wanted to adapt "Weathering with You" into a short manga was not just out of his love for the work and its excellent quality.
What he cared about more was that "Weathering with You" contained a large number of modern elements, including smartphones, urban surveillance networks, instant messaging and video, online social media, and so on.
And he, did not intend to "localize" these elements.
Simply put, he wanted to take this animated film released in 2019 and, in the form of a short manga, transport it exactly as it was to the present day of 1999.
Then, first and foremost, "Weathering with You" would change from a fantasy love story in a modern setting to a fantasy love story with a near-future sci-fi theme.
Under these circumstances, how would the readers of this era evaluate it?
Good reviews? Bad reviews? Highly controversial?
However, he didn't really care about that point; he didn't count on "Weathering with You" to bring him any achievements or honors in this era.
What he cared about more was—how would readers twenty years later react to it?
This was what he was most interested in, and the reason he most wanted to draw it.
One could even say—this was a gift he was giving to the future world, and also a gift to his future self.
Of course, to avoid being too shocking or unconventional, he would probably still make some slight modifications.
For example, changing the story's time setting from 2019 to 2009, or 2039, or something similar.
Regardless, he believed that "Weathering with You" born in 1999 would very likely end up with an evaluation completely different from the original world line in his previous life.
The biggest difference between the two was simply that the time of their birth was different.
Time, it really is such a magical thing.
And his actions, could that be considered playing with time a little bit?
...But then again, his very existence seemed to already be quite provocative to it.
Never mind then.
In short, the above is the reason he wanted to draw "Weathering with You", and the point that made him feel hesitant was actually quite simple—that is, if he were to draw "Weathering with You", the workload would be a bit large.
In reality, "Weathering with You" did have an official manga adaptation in his previous life, with a total page count of around 560 pages, equivalent to about 23 chapters of a serialized manga.
However, he happened to have read the manga version of "Weathering with You" in his previous life.
Based on his current drawing skills, he could bluntly say that the reason the manga version of "Weathering with You" could have so many pages was mainly because the Manga Artist's skill level was very average.
Specifically, the other party drew too many redundant panels, and their grasp of the number of panels was too casual; sometimes, even for a normal plot page, they would only allocate two or three panels.
Trying to cut corners, are they!
Wait.
Thinking of this, Akira suddenly realized that this might actually have been intentional on their part.
After all, the manga version of "Weathering with You" was a purely fan-oriented work; as long as the manga version was drawn, there would be no shortage of fans paying for it.
And in such a situation, the more pages drawn, of course, the better.
Fine, fine, fine, so that's how you want to play, huh?!
In short, although he intended to adapt "Weathering with You" into a manga exactly as it was, copying the official manga version was out of the question—that would just be flooding it with filler.
However, even if he adapted it in his own way, he estimated he would need to draw nearly 200 pages to fully present the plot, which was also no small project.
Once this is finished, it could be released directly as a standalone volume.
Not only that, when mentioning "Weathering with You", one had to mention Makoto Shinkai's exquisitely detailed background art and minimalist character lines.
Leaving aside the minimalist character lines, that exquisitely detailed art style of theirs was also a part he wanted to recreate.
Because in his view, this was also one of the essences of the work.
Although the film's performance in color was something hard to achieve in black-and-white manga, he at least hoped to reach the pinnacle of his own drawing skill within the framework of black-and-white manga.
In short, this is an all-out effort.
After considering all the above circumstances, he decided to just draw it.
Fortunately, Hisashi had said that the commission for the short story had no restrictions on subject matter or time, so he had plenty of time to complete it; in any case, he would take it slow.
Thinking of this, he decided to change his mood a little first.
『Rin』: "Mochizuki-kun, we can head out now."
『Akira』: "OK, coming."